


Our Hidden Sides

by Absolutely_Barbaric



Category: Original Work
Genre: Caretaking, Hurt/Comfort, Illness/injury, Original Characters (not mine) - Freeform, Rib fracture, Whump, commissions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-06-27 08:07:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19786756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Absolutely_Barbaric/pseuds/Absolutely_Barbaric
Summary: A commission for derberner, thank you for letting me write about your amazing characters yet again!Alek is keeping a little more than a rib fracture hidden from Jean. Unfortunately for him, Jean is just as stubborn, and he's going to find out what it is.





	Our Hidden Sides

Each and every morning for the past way too goddamn long, Alek was the one to wake Jean up. No matter how grumpy, no matter how hungover, he’d always shake him awake like the world was ending only to beam, “Good morning!” and scamper off before Jean could throw something at him.

Today, Jean woke up on his own. Unbothered sleep was something he’d craved through all his time with the springy little wacko, yet for some reason, it seized him with more alarm than any time he’d ever been startled awake. Fiery and bold, the sun had already risen well past dawn and shone its rays over Alek’s blankets, under which he lay motionless. The only sign of life was the occasional twitch of his foot or shoulders. Even his breathing was mild and for the most part undetectable.

Concern did nudge at him, but Jean couldn’t pass up this golden opportunity. Here he was, awake, and there Alek was, sleeping peacefully. What better time to give him a taste of his own medicine after a year of interrupted rest? Deviously, Jean began to creep over to Alek’s bedside in the hopes he could scare him into falling over, or maybe convince him he’d been in a coma for twenty years and they were the only survivors of the zombie apocalypse. A little overboard for payback, but he wouldn’t deny that he was just an asshole too.

Unfortunately, at the very first creak of the floorboards Alek stirred, rubbing his eyes and mumbling, “I’m up, I’m up.” No luck this time. He’d get his chance some day. Still, it was weird. If Alek was already awake, he’d at least be making breakfast by now.

Jean countered, “You’re not up, you’re lying down.”

When Alek didn’t giggle at his dad joke, that was strike number two. The sense of something being terribly wrong was beginning to eat at him, but he couldn’t yet put his finger on it.

“I’m getting up,” Alek shot back. His voice was weak, that of an argument where he knew he was wrong but didn’t want to give it up. Jean raised an eyebrow and waited for him, and for a minute, he did nothing. Then, he took a short, shuddering breath and sat himself up onto the backs of his elbows, fully awake as if he’d been for hours yet still, he looked all but ready to get out of bed. He made no mention of his strange behavior and all too gently placed his legs over the side of his mattress, bracing himself to rise to his feet. To turn something so simple into a spectacle, he had to be feeling like shit.

Jean mused dryly, “Did you get into my liquor cabinet?” But Alek gave him no more of a response than the shake of his head. It was then Jean noticed that more than his head was shaking—his hands were trembling, flinching with a restrained impulse like he wanted to move them but was keeping them solid in place.

Strike three. Time to get to the bottom of this.

“Alright,” Jean sighed, taking his seat on the corner of Alek’s bed. “What hurts?” 

Alek shook his head again and fidgeted anxiously with the sleeves of his pajamas.

“Nothing hurts.”

He was lying. Not like either of them bought it, but he was fighting hard with every bit of his dwindling strength to get Jean off his back. Which wasn’t gonna happen.

“Okay. Bend down and touch your toes.”

He whined at Jean’s request, withering to pieces under his iron stare.

“ _ Why? _ ”

“Why not? Shouldn’t be a problem if nothing hurts.”

To the kid’s credit, he did try. He tried so hard his fingers almost made it past his kneecaps before he cried out, paler than a sheet of paper doused in white paint. In his effort he bit down on his bottom lip to muffle his own voice, and Jean could tell then that it had freshly been bitten raw—he’d been silencing himself for hours. The poor thing was shaking like a leaf and he was still stretching to bend all the way, as if he’d convince anyone if he could actually manage. Jean, on the other hand, couldn’t bear the sight of it any longer and jumped to his own feet to ease Alek back down.

“Alright, alright,” he coaxed him, “That’s enough...You’re not fooling anyone. Lift up your shirt.”

“But...”

“I don’t have all day.”

“O-Okay, fine...I swear, it’s just sore because I was coughing too hard last night.”

Jean was caught in the middle of arguing back, “I never heard you coughing,” when Alek pulled the bottom of his shirt up and revealed an alarmingly dark purple-tinted bruise that was painful just to  _ look _ at, centered around the left side of his rib cage. He could see Alek flinch with every inhale, short and quivering like it was killing him just to breathe. It was ghastly. And right away, Jean knew exactly what caused it, and why Alek was hiding it.

“ _ This is from last night. _ ”

“N-No! Like I said, I coughed too hard and I—“

“You told me you were  _ fine _ after that wolf struck you. Why would you hide this from me? Alek, this is  _ serious _ .”

“I know that, I...I didn’t think it was that bad.”

Another lie. At some point he was going to have to realize that he was a terrible liar and that Jean was terribly perceptive, at least when it came to his safety. In any case, now wasn’t the time to argue. Not when speaking looked to be agony for him. The slightest ghost of his fingers over Alek’s bruise made him squeal, but in that time Jean could feel an indent just over his rib and knew, it had to be fractured. All the more telling were the dark circles under Alek’s eyes, starkly contrasted to his pale skin, that confessed how restless he had been through the night. The top priority was to wrap the bruising as soon as possible, but vital as it was, Jean could only take so much of Alek’s pitiful whimpering before it broke his heart to pieces. He went instead for the liquor he kept at his nightstand for particularly rough mornings and from it, he poured Alek a glass of the finest brandy he had. The fumey eye-watering stench alone made Alek wrinkle his nose and turn away.

“I don’t wanna hear any complaining,  _ drink _ . And do your best not to cough, it’s potent.”

Alek turned his head further.

“It’s the only thing we have that’ll dull the pain. Come on, I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t like drinking.”

“Do you like hurting?”

Reluctantly, Alek took the glass and pinched his nose shut, and in the stupidest move Jean had seen from him yet, tried to chug it like water. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go well. The more he choked, the worse it hurt until he was raking his fingernails across his own chest for air and Jean had to pry them away before he drew blood. 

“Calm down.  _ Take a breath.” _

“ _It_ _hurts…_!”

“I know, kid, I know. Just try your best to relax...That’s it. You can do it.”

With tears slipping down his cheeks, Alek squeezed his eyes shut and took the deepest breath he could, excruciating as it was. His coughing eventually subsided, but the pain was like lightning tearing fresh across the bone. Even when the alcohol started to seep in and his eyesight became swirly, he could feel just how raw and ceaseless it was. He hadn’t even realized he was clawing into Jean’s arm for support instead until he smelled that familiar metallic scent blooming from the imprints he left in his skin.

“Sorry—“

“Don’t be. It’ll fade soon enough.”

He wasn’t talking about his own scratches. As he started to paw through their unimpressively sized medicine drawer, Alek had gone a little too quiet while the unspoken truth hung in the air; he’d covered up his injury from last night, and sooner or later Jean was going to get the truth out of him. He was going to have to admit how much dead weight he was in the line of battle for getting injured so carelessly, how he was really trying to improve and didn’t want to make Jean worry all the time anymore. It wasn’t good for him. No doubt he would be scolded, as if he didn’t already know it was a stupid decision to try and hide his wound, and Jean would surely never let him tag along for anything other than odd jobs again. He probably wouldn’t even let him hold a hammer after this.

“...cold, so brace yourself.”

“Huh?”

Alek almost leapt right off the mattress when a bag of crushed ice was touched to his skin. The chill actually stunned him enough to forget for a moment how bad his sudden jump prodded at his fracture, though there was a dull, unwelcomed throb to remind him. He met eyes with Jean, who showed the briefest glint of empathy before it was overshadowed by a rough, “I told you to hold still.”

Heaviness reclaimed the air between them as Jean wrapped his breastbone, his touch unnaturally delicate for someone whom Alek had witnessed break a pistachio nut open with his bare fist instead of just peeling it. The silence choked him more than the brandy—maybe this was his strategy, to just stay quiet until Alek blurted out the reason behind his lie. But that was nonsense, Jean was always this quiet. Maybe. He was too anxious to remember.

“Alek.”

He tensed up, then was swiftly punished with a sharp twinge of pain for doing so.

“Next time, tell me if you get hurt. I could have taken care of this last night if you’d have told me.”

No chastising. No anger. He didn’t even raise his voice. Alek was speechless.

“...You’re not mad at me?”

Jean flicked him in the forehead. “‘Course I’m mad at you,” he said, “You had me worried sick.”

“But...you said ‘next time’.”

“Yeah? And?”

“I just thought if you found out, you wouldn’t let me come with you anymore...”

It sounded stupid when he said it out loud. Even stupider when he saw the face Jean was making. But in place of a crude tongue-lashing, Jean took his own swig of brandy and clapped Alek on the shoulder, too out of nowhere for him to even react.

“You’re a grown man. I’m not gonna keep you locked up in the house like a mutt just because you make a mistake here and there.” Hearing that, Alek breathed a sigh of relief—as much as he could sigh without pain flashing in his ribs—when Jean squeezed his shoulder a little harder and added, “If you  _ ever  _ hide something this dangerous from me again so help me I’ll chain you to the walls, you won’t see moonlight for ages. You hear me?”

Alek hid a small grin behind his blanket-veiled hand and nodded. “Yes, dad.”

“Ugh, I hate it when you call me that.”

And it was over. Jean walked off to scrounge together some fresh ice and a larger bag, leaving Alek quieted by this tender side he rarely saw from him. The fracture continued to ache even with his head fuzzied by drink, but he couldn’t quit smiling. Sometimes, underneath that hard exterior and whiskey stench...Jean could be a real caring man. He thought that even after Jean came back and shoved his makeshift ice pack against his ribs without warning, causing him to cry out like a wounded animal. Caring, definitely caring. Just not very gentle.

“You may not feel it now, but that liquor oughta put you out faster than you can...”

Loud snoring drowned out the last of his words. This time it was Jean who couldn’t quit grinning; the pure helplessness of this pitiful lightweight was too much not to laugh at sometimes. Alek was a simple sweetheart through and through, but after this morning, he’d be damned if the kid couldn’t swallow down some pretty intense pain.

Resigning himself to the bed across, Jean continued to watch him for a good few minutes, just to make sure he wouldn’t suddenly stop breathing or something else unexpected that he didn’t need to deal with thirty minutes into waking up.

“You’re a stubborn one,” he murmured to nobody. “Just like me. Maybe if I wasn’t always so stubborn, you wouldn’t have…”

He shook his head and finished off the brandy. Without another word, he pulled the covers up over Alek’s chest and slid an extra pillow under his head—last thing he needed was a case of pneumonia from struggling to breathe properly on top of everything. He looked to be out for the next long while, which meant with all else taken care of, Jean’s priority now was to find a doctor and make absolutely certain his condition was just that of a fractured rib, not anything worse. He was no doctor himself, after all.

At the door he lingered, kept still by the awful idea that something might happen to Alek while he was out, but he bit down his dread and looked back at the sleeping dhampir tenderly. It was only a broken bone, not too horrible a break at that. He was still alive. Alive and well, and absolutely oblivious to Jean’s own personal stakes in keeping him that way.

“I’ll be back,” he said, an unheard of before gentleness lacing his voice. “I promise.”


End file.
